The Long Journey Back to the Beginning

Some things you put down gently. Not because you want to. Because life asks you to, and you love life enough to listen.

I put down my camera thirteen years ago. I didn't know it would be that long. I think I told myself it was temporary, that I'd find my way back when time was right, when the air felt lighter, when I was ready.

Thirteen years is a long time. Long enough to become someone different. Long enough to forget what your eye used to look for. What made you stop walking and just look. Long enough to wonder if that part of you was still in there, or if you'd left it behind somewhere along the way.

Then Iceland. A black church on the edge of the world, wind-worn, solitary, quietly enduring. I'd seen photographs of it before. I knew what it looked like. But the minute I raised my camera and clicked the shutter, something shifted.

I was home.

Not in Iceland. Home inside myself, in that particular way of seeing that had always been mine and had apparently been waiting patiently the whole time.

Thirteen years. One click.

You don't go back to who you were. You go back to what you loved, and you find out who you've become.